noun
definition
A method or means for achieving a particular result, especially when direct or efficient; a resource.
adjective
definition
Suitable to effect some desired end or the purpose intended.
example
Most people, faced with a decision, will choose the most expedient option.
definition
Affording short-term benefit, often at the expense of the long-term.
definition
Governed by self-interest, often short-term self-interest.
definition
Expeditious, quick, rapid.
Examples of expedient in a Sentence
Before considering observational data, it is expedient to mention various sources of uncertainty.
But soon another and cheaper expedient presented itself.
Nothing could be more false than the common opinion that as a financier his sole expedient was to multiply the emissions of assignats.
But neither the one nor the other expedient availed him.
All puddles and collections of water should be filled in or drained; as a temporary expedient they may be treated with petroleum, which prevents the development of the larvae.
A third Italian army would, if expedient, pass into Germany, to operate against either France or Russia.
This expedient seems to have solved the problem.
Brand refused to allow the Free State to be committed to a suicidal treaty, or dragged into any wild policy which the Transvaal might deem it expedient to adopt.
Cromwell had exhausted every expedient for arriving at an arrangement with the king by which the royal authority might be preserved, and the repeated perfidy and inexhaustible shiftiness of Charles had proved the hopelessness of such attempts.
Seidler granted indeed a rearrangement of districts in Bohemia (seven Czech, four German and two mixed); but he could not make up his mind to go further, and tried the expedient of summoning a fresh Parliament on June 16.
The corporation of Glasgow having persisted in its efforts to obtain a licence, the Treasury appointed Sheriff Andrew Jameson (afterwards Lord Ardwall) a special commissioner to hold a local inquiry in Glasgow to report whether the telephone service in that city was adequate and efficient and whether it was expedient to grant the corporation a licence.
Temminck, whose father's aid to Le Vaillant has already been noticed, brought out at Paris a Histoire naturelle des pigeons illustrated by Madame Knip, who had drawn the plates for Desmarest's volume.3 Since we have begun by considering these large illustrated works in which the text is made subservient to the coloured plates, it may be convenient to continue our notice of such others of similar character as it may be expedient to mention here, though thereby we shall be led somewhat far afield.
At last, however, his temporary connexion with the college de Beauvais was ended by a feat of arms which proved him as stout a fighter with his sword as with his pen; and, since his victory was won over officers of the king's guard, it again became expedient for him to change his place of residence.
Alexius, in order to escape such an ordeal, resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a pistol-shot.
But its effect is to make whole the mind, and, so far as it is expedient, the body as well."
The most important consequences of the expedient, however, were not intended or perceived at the time.
And so, as they had the power and wish to inculpate him, this expedient of an inquiry and trial seemed unnecessary.
In time it became a common practice to cover them with a thin sheathing or plating of iron, in order to add to their life; this expedient caused more wear on the wooden rollers of the wagons, and, apparently towards the middle of the 18th century, led to the introduction of iron wheels, the use of which is recorded on a wooden railway near Bath in 1734.
The men, however, refused to march without seeing their sultan, and the singular expedient was resorted to of propping up the dead monarch's body in a dark room and concealing behind it an attendant who raised the hands and moved the head of the corpse as the troops marched past.
It was held to be necessary and expedient, and it was accordingly carried out.
Its use appears to have spread more rapidly outside Germany than in Germany itself, one cause of its popularity being that it was negative and colourless, and could thus be applied by adherents of the "old religion" to those of the "new religion," without giving offence, on occasions when it was expedient to avoid abusive language.
Puttkammer was the chosen instrument of the Clerical Conservative policy initiated by Bismarck when the Socialist peril made it expedient to conciliate the Catholic Centre.
Fortoul's expedient of " bifurcation," the alternatives being letters and science.
Amidst universal anarchy, the young king, barely twenty years of age, inexperienced, ill-served, snatching at every expedient, worked day and night in his newly-formed camp in Scania (Skane) to arm the nation for its mortal struggle.
In view of the violence of Extremist obstruction, an effort was made to reform the standing orders of the Lower House, but parliamentary feeling ran so high that General Pelloux thought it expedient to appeal to the country.
In response to the demand for self-government, in September 1647 he and the council appointed - after the manner then followed in Holland - from eighteen representatives chosen by the people a board of nine to confer with him and the council whenever he thought it expedient to ask their advice; three of the nine, selected in rotation, were permitted to sit with the council during the trial of civil cases; and six were to retire each year, their successors to be chosen by the director and council from twelve candidates nominated by the board.
The cui-ious expedient of spiriting away the roof of any building of which the artist wished to show the interior was one of the most remarkable of these.
War, declared before England had gained the naval experience and wealth of the next fifteen years, and before Spain had been weakened by the struggle in the Netherlands and the depredations of the sea-rovers, would have been a desperate expedient; and the ideas that any action on Elizabeth's part could have made France Huguenot, or prevented the disruption of the Netherlands, may be dismissed as the idle dreams of Protestant enthusiasts.
In cases where the route of a line runs across a river or other piece of water so wide that the construction of a bridge is either impossible or would be more costly than is warranted by the volume of traffic, the expedient is sometimes adopted of carrying the wagons and carriages across bodily with their loads on train ferries, so as to avoid the inconvenience and delay of transshipment.
Consequently his labours had attained to a certain degree of completeness in this direction, and it may therefore be expedient here to name the different groups which he thus thought himself entitled to consider established.
On paper the scheme had everything to recommend it as the expedient most likely to bring about the desired end.
Even as a temporary measure, the choice of an extra-Palestinian site for the Jewish state was bitterly opposed by many Zionists; others (with whom Herzl appears to have sympathized) thought that as Palestine was, at all events momentarily, inaccessible, it was expedient to form a settlement elsewhere.
To save himself he hit upon the novel and terrible expedient of uniting the Tatars and the Cossacks Cossack in a determined onslaught upon the Republic, whose Rebellion of inward weakness, despite its brave outward show, 1648.
On the other hand there are clauses therein which make the creation of such a class perfectly feasible if thought expedient.
Many persons appear to suppose that decisions upon doubtful points can be avoided by the expedient of leaving the traditional reading in possession of the text.
Despite these public works Dr von KBrber found himself unable to induce parliament to vote the Budgets for 1903, rber's 1904 or 1905, and was obliged to revert to the expedient Ko parlia- employed by his predecessors of sanctioning the esti- mentary mates by imperial ordinance under paragraph 14 of diffi- the constitution.
It is more expedient, he concludes, to delay baptism.
They dared heir had obviously borrowed the expedient from the terms of the treaty of Troyes.
This expedient also failed.
The Reign of Terror was the expedient of a party which knew its weakness and unpopularity.
The last-named expedient had been described by Janssen in 1867.
Closing is also handled in an expedient manner at Nationwide.
In this way, you give while you receive and everyone gets the full file in the most expedient manner.
The second outing in the Alien franchise of feature films actually managed to avoid using a numeral at all, by the simple expedient of pluralizing the name of the movie it sequelized.
When repotting is adopted as a temporary expedient, as in the case of bedding-out plants which it is required to push forward as much as possible, it will suffice if provision is made to prevent the drainage hole from getting blocked, and a rich light compost is provided for the encouragement of the roots.
At this juncture a strengthening of the French alliance seemed to the prince not merely expedient, but necessary.
Mushet's aid was certainly valuable, but not more than Goransson's, who, besides thus offering a preventive of redshortness, further helped the process on by raising its temperature by the simple expedient of further subdividing the blast, thus increasing the surface of contact between blast and metal, and thus in turn hastening the oxidation.
But this is rarely expedient, because electricity is so expensive that it should be used for doing only those things which cannot be accomplished by any other and cheaper means.
Their use was not simply a barbarous expedient to defend man from the rigours of an arctic winter; woven wool alone cannot, in its most perfect form, accomplish this.
Bernstorff was one of the first to recognize the impotence of the French monarchy after the Seven Years' War, and in 1763 he considered it expedient to exchange the French for the Russian alliance, which was cemented by the treaty of the 28th of April (March i I) 1765.